Pulpy Kidney

Here’s my first dead lamb of the season. (Warning: this post has images of internal organs.) This is the part you never think of when you first get into raising animals. Of course you just visualize the miracle of birth, cute lambs prancing about; and, if any problems arise, heroic medical interventions which always result in salvation and choirs singing. Well, there is plenty of all that, for sure. But, there are also dead things.

At first, this shocking reality comes crashing down, and makes one go through a period of thinking to hell with this animal husbandry crap. Because it does not match up at all with your original vision. But after a while, you get used to it, and adjust to the reality that was obviously there all along. Now I’m pretty casual about it. Here we go:

It helps to have a lot of animals. Because to me, this is just number 4044, and I only knew that from reading her ear tags. I had to look in the computer to recall her dam’s number. If you have few sheep, and you’ve named this one Chrysanthemum or something, then it’s much more heart-wrenching. I read a few Facebook sheep discussion lists; and wryly smile over all the new-to-livestock people who mourn the loss of one cute bottle lamb or another. Lamenting, Snowflakehas gone over the rainbow bridge, RIP, my darling lamb, may you always run in green pastures in your little diapers and your waggy tail! And I think, oh, someday, you’ll be so over that.

And, instead, they might end up like me: donning latex gloves, drinking a beer, casually tolerating the reek of a ready-to-explode rumen that’s been sitting out in the sun all day; and fileting open ol’ Buttercup on the chest freezer in order to necropsy her. And thinking, hmmmm, Buttercup, your kidneys don’t look so hot.

Not that there isn’t still disappointment and a reverence for life. Certainly lambs are adorable, it’s sad that some of them don’t get to live very long, and distressing wondering if it’s a bad husbandry choice that has caused the loss. Not to mention, this lamb woulda sold for $350 in a short couple of months! But, Mother Nature has tough standards for survival, despite our best attempts to beat her at her game (and I do score some pretty awesome points against her sometimes!). In the end, it is what it is: once they’re dead, they’re dead; you might as well learn something from the loss. And every dead animal is a huge learning opportunity. The education that animal’s death provides may prevent dozens of losses in the future. Sometimes I am just too busy or tired to necropsy. But more and more, I remind myself, it only takes 15 minutes, and it really should be done every time. A good instructional video on lamb necropsies can be found here.

I nearly tripped over this lamb carcass in the pasture. Sometimes they are hard to see in the grass. Sick lambs seem to do one of two things. If they are feeling really poorly, they tend to try to crawl off on the edges of the pasture, and die in privacy and shelter. Or, they just drop dead right in the middle of everything. This one was the latter. What they were doing immediately prior to death is a clue.

If they’ve crawled off, I suspect e. coli scours, because although that comes on fast, they usually go through at least a day of their gut hurting before it kills them. So that one can often be caught in time, if one notices a lamb that’s “off” in one way or another. Lambs which are succumbing to starvation are also found on the periphery. When I do my flock checks, I always walk the perimeter looking for these crawled-off lambs, because they can usually be saved.

For lambs which die right in the company of all the other sheep, I suspect something more sudden: a random heart attack, a broken neck (from acrobatic leaping), blunt force trauma (from being butted by an adult), or clostridium. This was a big, vigorous, beautiful single lamb, 3.5 weeks old, with no diarrhea. So clostridium was definitely my first guess.

Clostridium perfringins is a fast killer. They say, the first symptom is dead lambs. Because, there usually are no presenting symptoms in time to treat. Clostridium bacteria are normally present in the intestine, but certain overfeeding conditions (namely, a lot of carbs and sugars, or very high protein) can allow the bacteria to proliferate. These bacteria release toxins, so when they multiply unchecked, they can rapidly murder the host. Other names for this disease are enterotoxemia, overeating disease, or pulpy kidney. The latter is a good pneumonic when doing a necropsy.

Indeed, this lamb’s kidneys were mush. I didn’t have handy a photo of a healthy kidney, but Google images reminds us of what they should look like:

They should be plump, dark red, with obvious kidney shape, that is firm when cut into, and slices neatly. These kidneys were pale, amorphous blobs that I could squish with my fingers, and which disintegrated when cutting with a sharp knife.

There was a little fluid around her heart (which can also be a clostridium sign). Her lungs had some red areas; so she was probably also fighting some pneumonia. Her liver was splotchy, with redness around the edges, which I am guessing isa result of coping with the toxic load of the bacteria. And she had angry, red small intestines. Her rumen was odd: the small mass of under-hydrated chopped grass was surrounded by a gray, clay-like layer, which I think was the inner stomach lining, destroyed and de-laminated. No parasites that I could see. Definitely lots of things going on, but my primary guess is clostridium; with maybe secondary pneumonia contributing to her immune system distress.

This doesn’t alarm me too much, I feel I only get about one of these a year, because my lambs are not on creep fed. Plus, I vaccinate the ewes for this during pregnancy, so they should pass on maternal immunity to protect lambs during most of the high milk output window.

But, there are exceptions to the rule. Sometimes the vaccines don’t work on some individuals. Sometimes maybe the vaccine didn’t get administered right (like the needle shot through the other side of her skin and I didn’t see it). Sometimes maternal immunity drops off earlier-than-typical in some lambs. My backup plan for clostridium is always this: if I were to see more than one case clustered together, where I might have a trend, I would rush to the feed store and buy the vaccine, and do all the lambs, and hope that salvages the situation. But one lamb a year? Not worth putting them all at risk with one more injection and set of stressful handling to questionably save a single individual.

For next time: now I have a ewe with no lamb, who has an uncomfortably full udder, at risk of heading into mastitis. I have two other triplet lambs from different sets which I’m bottle feeding to help them along. This gets me thinking…

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10 Responses to “Pulpy Kidney”

thank you for noticing that little blurb – i couldn’t control myself, and i’d hope you would catch it. peer micromanagement indeed. i wish i could take you out to dinner and discuss it. maybe next time i’m in seattle? i always manage a trip to the north end. and i’m not crazy, even though my blog title has that word in it.

thanks for the necropsy, i really appreciate being able to see the things we ponder about with worry all the time, from the outside.

Lytha, would LOVE to get together with you sometime when you are here! If you can squeeze in time for a nerd blogger friend! I would drive down south to see you too, especially if it may involve a horse visit or ride (tho I only have the riding skills of an unschooled 12 year old who rode willy nilly through Bridal Trails on friends’ horses in the olden days!).

Hi, Michelle, Have you tried MotherUp or the like? It uses strong essential oils (seems like mostly mint) to block olfactory reception while grafting mother and baby together. You spray it on mother and baby a couple times until the baby is grafted onto a new mom/original mom. They suggest forcing a feeding or two, and the scent confuses mom until the baby develops the natural scent of having eaten mom’s milk.

harrietnw, I haven’t tried it before; I haven’t had much opportunity or need to do grafting (or both at the same time). This time, just a stanchion did the trick; but I may explore doing more of it in the future since I had good luck with it this time; I’ll have to check it out!

I just posted about the time I used it, but it was quick and easy. Are you going to vax the grafted babies? If the lamb died from overeating mother’s milk… She may just be a great milker, or she may not regulate their feed well enough. Or maybe your clover is knee-high like ours. (Well, where the critters haven’t gotten to it yet.)

Gross pictures, but thank you for sharing. I hope I’ll never use what I learned. :-) Country living has its share of dead things, though, for sure.

I was a wreck when I saw you in October after losing our first lamb. You were probably pitying my poor, hapless ‘newbie with a broken heart’ status. I feel bad for the old me, too ;). You’ll be happy to know that we did our first necropsy this year when we lost a 4-day old. Looked to be a malfunctioning bile duct. You are so right that death is one of the greatest opportunities to learn. Otherwise, what the hell is it for?
Thanks for all you do to educate. I love it.

Oof, well, Janya, it’s different when it’s an adult sheep and one that’s intentionally been made a pet and is friendly (versus most of my lambs hate me! :-)). And your scenario was definitely a huge bummer, one of those one-in-a-million bad luck things with a veterinary procedure gone south.

But, with a lamb crop, it’s different; since they are a crop. The web lists I read are mostly Katahdin groups, and for the most part, these folks are raising sheep for meat; so that’s where I think it’s kinda funny that they get all attached to a particular bummer lamb. Good for you for doing a necropsy, it sure is a cool learning experience if you can get past the smell! :-0

harrietnw – I probably won’t vaccinate the grafted lambs, I believe they got good colostrum; and of course now they are putting a pretty big demand on this yearling ewe who was only feeding one, and now has two, which are a week older than her’s was. And she’s heading into the decline of milk production after the 30-day mark. So I doubt they will get opportunity to overeat in this situation. We do have some clover, but not huge amounts of it; and I’ll keep them in the barn for another week or so just to make sure things are right. The graft went surprisingly well.

There is a big difference for sure between pets and crops and that little guy was my buddy. So I guess I’ll forgive myself for being such a wreck.
Next time you do a necropsy, I would love to be there. And I’ll bring the beer!